The Man Who Fell Read online

  The police left a little after lunch, taking the car with them. That was good. What wasn't so good was that the damned memories of that day had remained behind.

  He'd given up on the coffee – even with whiskey in it it wasn't enough – and turned to beer, but that wasn't helping yet. Truthfully beer never helped as it should, it just muddied everything up in his head. But that was as much as anything else could do. Therapy certainly hadn't helped. All it had done was made everything more painfully real.

  At least the therapists had known what was wrong with him, even if they couldn't seem to find a magic bullet to cure him. They said it was post traumatic shock. And he supposed it was. But knowing what it was, didn't help. It was just a name. He wanted to get rid of it and that was something else entirely.

  That, they'd all said, would just take time. Apparently a lot of time.

  It was a potent combination punch he'd been hit with. First the fear of coming home and hearing noises, a woman crying out, and thinking his wife was being hurt. Then the shock and betrayal of breaking into the bedroom only to discover that her cries were those of passion as she made love with some naked guy in their bed and she urged him on. Then the pain as the man had simply got up in the middle of the act, grabbed him like he was a toy doll and simply knocked him through the bedroom wall, breaking more than a few of his bones in the process. And then the terror as he'd been hurled out a window and seen the street so far below, approaching at an ungodly pace and thinking he was going to die.

  All those emotions, dialled up to eleven in a desperately short space of time, until the white hot mass of them had simply burnt his brain out. He understood that.

  It was more than that though. It wasn't just the betrayal. It was the fact that he'd thought they were happy. He'd been happy. And he'd thought Celeste had been too. Why had she done that? He kept asking himself that. Why? He had given everything he had to Celeste and he'd thought she's done the same. He'd thought their life was a fairly tale. But in one single moment it had become a nightmare. He'd learned that everything had been a lie. He was just the respectable husband. The man she could be seen with. But in her heart she'd always wanted the wildness of a tattooed, hard body freak who roared like a bloody lion. She'd never loved him at all. That cut deep. All at once he'd been left small and inadequate. Gelded. Less than a man.

  There was also the face. Her face. The strange fire in it, flowing through her into her lover's back. He kept trying to tell himself that he hadn't seen that. That it was just his mind playing tricks on him. A delusion. But he couldn't. Because her face had been alien. Scary alien. And that wasn't just frightening, it went against everything he knew about the world.

  Sometimes in the dark and quiet, he saw that face. Alien Celeste. And when he did all he could think was that nothing about the world was right. Everything he thought he knew about it was wrong. And he had nothing solid to stand on. When that face returned to him, he hit the bottle, hard.

  But understanding what had damaged him wasn't what he wanted. He just wanted the memories gone. All of them. If he could have he would have taken a drill to his head and dug them out himself. He didn't want to have to think about them again.

  That was why he'd come to a backwater like New Zealand. He'd wanted to be as far away from the city as he could be. He'd wanted quiet and calm. And a lifestyle block just out of Hamilton he'd thought would be as close as he could get to nowhere. No people to talk to unless he wanted to. No city noise. No traffic. No cameras being shoved in his face. No broken apartment to stare at. No one to remind him. Just peace and quiet – and beer.

  And it had been helping. Until that bloody girl had had to dredge up the past. Why? What the hell had he ever done to deserve this?

  That was what he never understood. He'd never done anything wrong to anyone. And then this? It was like the Bonfire of the Vanities for the innocent! All he was was an architect. He built homes for people who were better off than he was. He'd made a career for himself. And one day he'd met a girl that he'd thought loved him. Life had been perfect, he'd thought. And then this! From heaven to hell in thirty stories! It wasn't right!

  And those faces! He shuddered at the memory of them. But he couldn't get them out of his head.

  The police had seen something similar on that day, judging from the reports he'd read. They'd seen a man overwhelmingly high on something, screwing his wife over and over again, and refusing to come with them. A man who'd then hurled two of their number through walls when they'd tried to restrain him. Who'd taken four bullets without blinking, before tossing a piano at them and putting more of them in hospital. And who'd only stopped when he'd had some sort of seizure. PCP they'd said – though apparently they hadn't found it in his system. But it was more than that. And Celeste had been on it too. The madness had burned in her eyes too.

  At least the divorce had been quick. Written up while he'd still been in hospital. And he'd signed it on the day he'd woken up. What else could he do? The lawyers had been standing there, waiting for him to open his eyes. And there had been threats made. The promise of a public trial in which he would be paraded as a monster and the dead man as a hero, tragically cut down before his time. So he'd signed the papers

  Three years of marriage had been gone with the flick of a pen. But as quick as it was, the pain hadn't gone away so easily. He'd loved Celeste. He really had. She had been everything he could have dreamed of. Kind and beautiful and so very funny. But apparently she'd been bringing home men – this man at least – since the start. The doorman had told him that when he'd finally been released from hospital. There was no word for betrayal like that. No way to describe it.

  The only good thing about the divorce had been the prenup. Celeste's parents had made him sign it since they had money and he was just a street tramp as far as they were concerned. Which was why he had had enough money left from his business, the sale of his apartment and the insurance to buy a new home here in New Zealand. But even that had been tainted when his ex-wife had started going on the telly talking about how cold and emotionless he was, and how it was all his fault.

  Cold hearted bitch! He took another swig of his beer and then a gulp of the whiskey. What the hell had he ever seen in her?! And why had that damned girl had to bring any of it up again? All he wanted was to be left alone in peace. Was that too much to ask for?

  Work! He suddenly decided. That would help. Concentrating on problems would help him put aside the pain for a time. And he might no longer have an architecture business but he was still an architect. Besides, it was money. These days there were other ways for an architect to make money. One was to sell house plans on line.

  Dale put down his beer – it wasn't helping anyway – and headed to his office. It was really just the third bedroom, but it worked well enough as an architect's office. It had enough room for his desk and computer complete with a set of wall screens. And to hold a full-scale printer and a plotter table. It was better than his old office in some ways. He didn't have to wear a suit in this one. Or even shoes. But then he didn't have to meet with clients either. Just deal with a few emails here and there.

  Of course it didn't pay as much. He'd used to design and build houses for people with millions to spend. These days he sold a typical plan for a bit over a thousand bucks. It wasn't a fortune. But if he sold a couple of plans a month that more than covered his expenses, and meant he didn't have to dip into his savings.

  A few minutes later he was busy with his latest design, analysing loads on beams and joists and specifying the timbers to match, and somehow able to put the unhappy events of the morning behind him. And after an hour or two he'd almost managed to forget the whole thing.

  Work always helped. It was the one thing he had. He was one of those people who had been lucky enough to fall into a career that he enjoyed. He truly liked maths and design. He loved seeing his plans coming together to form a complete house. It was satisfying in a way that few other things were. Maybe it was because he'd g
rown up alone. An orphan from the day he was born. He had no parents. No family. So he liked to design family houses. He liked to build. And maybe one day, to live in one of those houses with his own family. Though that had clearly just been a dream.

  So he whiled away the hours and slowly managed to put the events of the morning behind him. At least until he looked up from his computer and realised that it was becoming harder to see. Evening had fallen and night was nearly upon him. Not only that but his stomach was rumbling at him, telling him it was time to eat something.

  But that was good, he thought as he stood up and stretched. The memories of the morning were already faded. Some coffee, some food and maybe some more beer would finish the day off happily for once. This might have actually ended up as a better day. Until he headed out into the main living area.

  “Where is she?” a woman snapped at him.

  Dale jumped, shocked at the fact that there was someone in his home. But before he could even think about yelling or screaming, there was a hand around his throat and he was being lifted off the ground.

  “Where?!” The woman yelled at him again, while her grip tightened.

  “Who?” He did his best to squeak at her as he struggled against her grip while his legs pumped furiously and uselessly at the air. But he doubted she understood. He could barely understand what was coming out of his mouth either – or why his feet weren't touching the ground.

  “Bah, you're useless!” And then she snorted dismissively at him, and threw him across the room.

  She threw him clear across ten metres of living room, until he was stopped by the far wall. Stopped so hard that he broke the wall. Broke some of the stuff in his back too. He knew that even as he fell to the floor, and then just lay there, helpless. Trying to breathe.

  Dale lay there, shocked and hurting, and just beginning to realise that things were not good. Ribs had broken. He knew that. He remembered knowing that same shocking pain three or more years before after someone else had thrown him through a wall. But that had been a man and he'd used two hands. Now women were throwing him around as though he was a child?

  His neck hurt too, as if it had been crushed. But somehow he could still breathe – in small gasps. Probably because most of the force she'd hurled him with had been on his collar bones, just below his neck. But they hurt as if they'd been bent. And they might have been bent. There was a lot of metal in them.

  But at least he was alive, he told himself. She could so easily have killed him. Broken his neck. Maybe she hadn't wanted to? Or maybe it was just blind luck. He didn't know. All he knew was that he hurt.

  After that he just lay there, propped up a little on an elbow, staring at the wooden floorboards, trying to keep breathing, while she wandered around the house, destroying things, apparently looking for this woman. He couldn't do anything to stop her. He couldn't do anything at all. And really the already dark room was growing darker. That he suspected was not a good sign. Nor was the fact that she kept yelling out for her mother. The woman was nuts!

  But then, even as he was trying to keep awake, something happened that he couldn't help but notice. A little buzzer went off, and she stopped what she was doing in mid destruction, and raised her hand to her mouth. Then she flipped open a ring, pulled out something – a pill he assumed – and shoved it in her mouth. That made no sense to him. But one thing did. He knew that ring. The wolf skull. Celeste had had one just like it. He couldn't understand how he could see it in the darkness, but somehow, just for a fraction of a second he did, and he recognised it.

  Then the instant passed, he collapsed the last of the way to the floor, and she continued wrecking his home while he lay there – until at some point the police showed up. He knew it was them because the room was filled with flashing blue and red lights, lighting up the ceiling. It was quite pretty.

  After that things went completely crazy. There were people yelling and screaming, a woman practically howling back at them, and the sound of metal being shredded and smashed. Sirens went off and a gun – a shotgun he thought – fired a couple of times. But he didn't care about any of that. He cared that the pain was fading. Becoming an ache. And that he was so damned tired. He wanted to sleep. Why were they annoying him? Keeping him from his rest?

  But thankfully they couldn't do that forever. And in time the noises faded, intruded less on his rest. And eventually the world finally went completely dark. Even the flashing lights went away.

  Chapter Four

  Hospital was never a place Dale wanted to be. But it was better than a grave he supposed. Though some days he wasn't completely sure of that. At least death would be peaceful. And he had been dead before. Several times. For long minutes at a time. After the fall it had been a miracle that the death hadn't been permanent. But at least it hadn't hurt.

  What he was sure of was that right now he hurt. He ached from head to toe even through the wall of drugs trying to keep the pain away. And he could only remember feeling like that once before – some weeks after he'd hit an awning after falling thirty stories.

  This wasn't that bad, quite. He could breathe. But it was getting up there.

  The bed was more comfortable though. Last time he remembered a hospital bed it had felt like concrete. But back then by the time he'd finally woken up, he'd been lying in it for two, nearly three weeks. He'd been developing bed sores. And at least he had working arms and legs. He checked that out. And his spine seemed to be in some sort of order. It was probably because after his first run in with his wife's lover, they'd had to pin him back together with every piece of titanium they could find. Bones didn't snap like they once had when they had titanium rods in them. And his back didn't bend as it once had after his spine had had three fusions, but it didn't break either. So hopefully most of the pain he was feeling was soft tissue. Bruising and swelling.

  But he suspected even as he reached for the buzzer, that there was more pain to come. Pain in the form of questions from the police that he simply couldn't answer. Questions that he also didn't want to answer. And no doubt they would tell him things he didn't want to hear. But he had to hear them. Things like how bad it was this time. How bad the damage to his home was. And perhaps worst of all, whether the press had caught wind of this yet. He couldn't face another period in the public eye. Not again.

  The doctor arrived fairly quickly, and that he supposed was reassuring. What wasn't so reassuring was that he looked like a teenager! He was an intern obviously, but still he looked too young.

  “Well Mr. Fall, it looks like you lived up to your name,” he began with the poorest excuse for a joke possible. “And that must have been some tumble. But judging from your x-rays, not the first you've taken. Sky diving accident?”

  “Something like that,” Dale replied doing his best not to snap at the young man. He didn't know. “How bad is it this time?”

  “Not so bad. Rib damage, cracked collar bones, a hell of a lot of bruising, swelling too, but you were lucky. Whoever put you back together after the last accident did a good job. I've never seen so much metal in one person before, but it seems to be holding together nicely and the bones have thickened over the fractures. You've healed well. No new major breaks. We'd know more if we could put you through an MRI, but of course, that's not going to be possible.”

  “I know. And airport scanners aren't a lot of fun either.” Mostly trips through them were followed by strip searches these days, which was one reason he didn't like flying. Another of course was the thought of going down in a plane. He didn't like heights a lot.

  “I bet.” The doctor smiled as if it was a joke instead of an ongoing tragedy. “Anyway, you should be out of here in a few days after we've done some tests. And for the moment you've got some visitors. They've been waiting to speak with you for quite a few hours now.” He stepped aside to let a couple of detectives step forwards.

  It was funny how police detectives looked the same in any country, Dale thought as he saw them. Even here in New Zealand where they didn
't carry guns. Maybe they shopped in the same clothing stores. Or maybe it was the expressions that they habitually wore. A mixture of suspicion and seriousness. Did they know how to smile, he wondered?

  “Don't know that there's a lot I can tell you officers,” Dale began before they could even identify themselves. He could guess the questions they would have for him and he didn't need to know their names.

  “It was getting dark, I stepped out of my office to get some dinner and a woman grabbed me. I hadn't seen her. She picked me up one handed by the throat, screamed “where is she?” at me a few times, and then hurled me across the room into the wall. After that there's not a lot I can tell you. I don't even know who called you guys.” And that actually was a mystery to him.

  “We don't know that either,” the darker haired man replied. “They just said it was a break in.”

  “Who the hell would break in to my place?” That didn't seem likely to Dale. It wasn't as if he kept any money or expensive silverware on the premises. Moreover why would a thief be yelling “where is she?” at him. And then there was the other question. Who would be able to see someone breaking in? He lived on a two acre lifestyle block. He had no view of his neighbours thanks to the surrounding trees, which he assumed meant that they had no view of him. And they couldn't hear anything either. They were too far away. He mentioned that to the detectives and got a non-committal sounding noise from the fair haired one.